Since the fall of Mubarak, the military has taken control of Egypt; promising to quickly transition power over to the people. Over the course of the year Egyptians have grown restless as they wait for the army to step down and have begun to question their intent. This restlessness has resulted in protests and violence.

As I read the news I'm constantly reminded of this passage, which I scribbled in my journal back in February and which I've now posted to Activate.﻿

An unexpected side effect of the 2010 flooding in parts of Sindh, Pakistan, was that millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising flood waters; because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water took so long to recede, many trees became cocooned in spiderwebs. People in the area had never seen this phenomenon before, but they also reported that there were fewer mosquitoes than they would have expected, given the amount of standing water that was left. Not being bitten by mosquitoes was one small blessing for people that had lost everything in the floods.﻿

I am launching a website next month called Comic Strip Tees. Every day the site will feature a comic by a different cartoonist and sell a t-shirt with that comic printed on it. Artists will receive a percentage of the shirt sales.

One of the goals of this site is to give some money back to the comic community. I can't think of a better way of doing this than by helping out Gary Friedrich. For the first month of the site, $1 will be donated for every shirt sold to the fund Steve Niles started for him. This won't bring in $17,000, but maybe it'll bring in a few hundred. Every cent helps.

People always say "support the arts" but without artists there wouldn't be any.